Councillors’ spat ‘handbags at dawn’

I was intrigued to read in last week’s edition the “handbags at dawn” email spat between Cllrs Arthur and Burgess. Call me old fashioned but I would have thought that these gentlemen would better serve their constituents (and the district as a whole) if they were to re-focus their energies in a more positive direction.

A good place to start might be tackling the incompetence at the district council which were it not costing you and I money would be comical. To illustrate this point let me not dwell on HDC determination to concrete over the countryside around the town. Similarly, I will not linger on the pointless increase in parking charges and the introduction of an evening tariff – at a time when retailers are fighting for their existence, a battle already lost by many.

Instead, I will focus on the refuse collection debacle. First when HDCs contractors damage the bins it is the householder who must pay for a replacement, it seems to me that it would not have been a work of genius to to have included a “make good damage” clause in the contract. Then there is the additional charging for green waste collection, a not so stealthy tax. But then we have this gem.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Like many denizens of the north side of the town I live in a close with a number of offshoots. Last week I received a letter dated 9 April from HDC which explained that due to difficulties “accessing your bins” (strange it hasn’t been a problem in any of the 12 years we’ve lived here) we would be required to leave our bins in a spot highlighted on an attached map which has been “deemed the most appropriate point from both an operational and aesthetic perspective” Funny I’ve never really thought of bins as having an aesthetic perspective before, still you live and learn. So when will this operationally and aesthetic optimised procedure be implemented? According to the letter of 9 April 2013…the week commencing 15 January 2013. Incidentally Jan 15 was a Tuesday. Clearly, HDC is a foreign country where things are done differently.

Gideon Ewers

Nymans Close , Horsham

Related topics: